Serial Number 047

OM Modern Redwood

*started on November 13, 2025; completed on December 12, 2025

This guitar has been planned ever since I made the left handed OM with Redwood as the soundboard. The curiosity is if it will sound as good as the left handed guitar I built. Time will tell.

The guitar should be a little brighter since I will be using Bubinga back and sides with the Redwood soundboard. The left handed OM was built with Black Walnut.

I didn’t think the sound hole location that was used on the last guitar build would work with the cutaway. It was only after the body was together that I tried to see if the location would have worked out – and it would have. I was considering that after this guitar, having the sound hole on the opposite side would be the standard on my guitars moving forward. But I had Jess Horricks try the modern classical and the hole location was at the tail end of where he strummed so I have to think about it more.

Laminated bracing is a standard at this point for my guitars. I like the laminated bracing – I feel like there should be more strength which in theory can allow for lower bracing height. And the visual of the laminated braces is nice – especially when the sound hole is to one side and you can see the side bracing following the path of the back bracing. I feel that the work to do the laminated braces is worth it.

I did want to make another “rainbow edition” neck on this guitar as there were some good ideas that came up during the build of the Parlour guitar with the multi-tonewood neck. I think some people would look at it and think “that’s cool” but on the other side, I think some people might see it as a bunch of scrap wood put together.

I already know that doing the multi-tonewood neck is strong. I didn’t even have to adjust the truss rod on that guitar at all – it is still in the loose/neutral setting.

I have seen Facebook posts of a boutique builder that uses a lot of tonewoods to make accents in their neck which I think is overkill. It does look cool and *could possibly be helping structurally since glue in stronger than the wood but I don’t believe that was the actual intention of why they did it.

After looking through the inventory list, I decided to go with Ash. I didn’t want something on the tan/orange side for the neck as the body is pretty much that kind of shade already. I tried to carve a volute into the neck angle but it didn’t turn out as good as I hoped. So far, I feel that the very first one I attempted turned out the best.

For some reason, the neck angle to the body was really out of whack. I found out that the radius on the soundboard side was overdone somehow. Only on spot of the perimeter was touching the radius dish. I have a suspicion that it might have happened with S/N 036.

With that, I did some research into making a “record player”. I found out from a Facebook group that they were using pottery wheels to use as “record players”. The one they were all buying didn’t quite have enough power (assuming it was the wattage) so I went one step above what they were buying. It should be enough as it claims to be able to hold 17 pounds and the radius dish is about 13 pounds. I still need to modify it into one of my benches. I will have it ready for the next build.

Something new was chosen for the fingerboard – Royal Blackwood. I purchased a couple of these thinking it was something on the higher end from the “Blackwood” part of it but found out it wasn’t something special as it is man-made to be what it is. Maybe it was made to help reduce the cutting of Ebony trees.

The small abalone rectangles were used as inlays on the fingerboard. White side marker dots on the black fingerboard.

A block of 3A Ebony had been pulled at the same time as the Royal Blackwood fingerboard. I felt that some black would go with the colours that are being used in this build.

The headplate has three veneers on it. I had an idea during the build on making a flush truss rod cover. I feel like it went well but a few things need a little more thinking through. It is a start.

The guitar turned out to be fuller sounding than I was expecting from the Bubinga.

SPECS

Body Orchestra Model

Scale 25.34″

Top Redwood

Back Bubinga

Sides Bubinga

Neck Ash/Bloodwood strip

Fingerboard Royal Blackwood

Bridge Ebony

Tuning Machines Gotoh 381

Strings D’Addario EJ26 Phosphor Bronze